On September 18, 2017, the Minnesota Court of Appeals issued a decision affirming a temporary injunction issued on January 19, 2017 by a Hennepin County District Court in which the lower court limited the Minneapolis sick and safe time ordinance to businesses located within the city limits of Minneapolis.

Landowners challenging land use decisions generally have an uphill battle. Government subdivisions are accorded broad discretion by courts, such that prevailing in an action challenging a zoning decision requires compelling evidence of arbitrary government action.

Property owners in the path of light rail and bus rapid transit projects are now eligible to receive the full protection of the state’s eminent domain laws, thanks to legislation passed in 2017 by the State Legislature.

This summer, the franchising community scored a victory in the continuing joint employer battle when the Department of Labor rolled back its Obama-era guidance creating employer liability for workplace violations if the employer exercised indirect control over the workplace. As we celebrate the victory of the return of the DOL’s “direct control” standard, we should remain only cautiously optimistic in the wake of several recent federal court decisions highlighting the continued joint employer threats to the franchise model.

Claims for breach of the obligation to perform in good faith, whether express or implied, continue to be popular among franchisees who choose to litigate their disputes. However, when the franchise agreements are drafted to address the key issues that are in dispute, these claims fail as courts continue to reject arguments that the obligation of good faith overrides the franchise agreement’s clearly defined, express terms. Two U.S. Court of Appeals cases from this summer illustrate how franchisors were able to overcome these claims, and how enterprising franchisors might even further improve their odds in the future.

In 1971, Governor Wendell Anderson appointed Edward J. Driscoll as Minnesota’s Commissioner of Securities and Chairman of the Minnesota Commerce Commission, where he was responsible for the regulation of financial service industries, including insurance, state chartered banks, securities, and real estate.

In a favorable decision for employers seeking to enforce non-solicitation restrictions against former employees, the Federal District Court for the District of Minnesota recently granted a preliminary injunction preventing a former employee from soliciting customers by posting on LinkedIn in violation of her non-solicitation agreement with her prior employer.

On August 29, 2017, the EEOC reported that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is going to review the new, proposed EEO-1 form and, accordingly, the old EEO-1 form should be used for the 2017 year.

In November 2016, a federal judge in the Eastern District of Texas issued a nationwide injunction blocking a Department of Labor (DOL) regulation, originally scheduled to take effect on December 1, 2016. On August 31, 2017, that same court issued a summary judgment order which fully invalidated the regulation.

As has been widely observed over the past several years, certain locations have become preferred venues for patent infringement suits. Naturally, any plaintiff looking to file such a suit will seek a venue that is most likely to produce a favorable result. Based on a recent Supreme Court decision, infringement cases will likely spread out across the country.

A patent owner generally has the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering for sale or importing the patented invention. However, these rights cease to exist with respect to a patented product when the "patentee" sells the product to a purchaser. This same understanding was recently confirmed by the US Supreme Court in Impression Products v. Lexmark International, Inc.

On March 22, 2017, the Supreme Court handed down a decision about a potentially significant copyright issue. In the Varsity Brands case the court said that various designs consisting of things like stripes and chevrons on a cheerleading uniform were eligible for copyright protection.

In an article published in the May 7 edition of The New York Times, Nicole Perlroth reported on data security breaches that affected big names like Lady GaGa, Netflix, and Lockheed Martin. In the case of Lady GaGa and Netflix, pre-release copies of songs and TV episodes were taken and distributed by hackers.

If you are considering a digital transformation in 2017, you are not alone. Every industry, including the legal industry, has felt the pull to complete varying degrees of digital transformation. Such an undertaking can include moving storage to a cloud service, the addition of mobile applications, going paperless or using an e-signature platform.

On May 8, 2017, the North American Securities Administrators Association, Inc. (“NASAA”) formally issued new guidance, the NASAA FPR Commentary (the “Commentary”), to clarify what constitutes a reasonable basis in making a financial performance representation (“FPR”)—with specific guidance for a variety of common FPRs that are made in Item 19 of Franchise Disclosure Documents (“FDDs”). The Commentary provides welcome guidance to franchisors that have been reluctant to include FPRs in their FDDs, or whose efforts to include FPRs have been rebuffed by state franchise examiners, but it will ultimately require all franchisors that currently include an FPR in their FDD to revise their FPR.

Minneapolis and St. Paul each issued rules and a collection of frequently asked questions (FAQ) April 1, further clarifying the implementation of each city’s sick and safe time ordinance. The ordinances, which guarantee paid earned sick and safe time for employees working within the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, are scheduled to go into effect on July 1, 2017.

Sawan Patel co-authored the Minnesota chapter in the American Bar Association’s book on franchise registration and disclosure exemptions, “Exemptions and Exclusions Under Federal and State Franchise Laws,” published in 2017.